


The Steps of Remembering

by bibsinibs



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:38:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibsinibs/pseuds/bibsinibs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After leaving the man he had just pulled out of the water behind, Bucky is left with only his thoughts and his slowly returning memories. He doesn't feel ready to face the man with the familiar face but they're drawn to each other like two magnets no matter where in the world they find themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hospital Visits

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit short but there's more to come I just need to finish it first :)
> 
> More characters and other tags might be added on later.

He slips in through the window when the man he remembers ripping a metallic wing off in the midst of battle leaves the room. He stands close to the windows and looks at the blonde man in the hospital bed in the middle of the room. This impossible man who had let his colorful shield drop and refused to fight him, who had called him Bucky, who had called him his friend and begged him to remember who he is. How could this man he had never met before know who he is when he didn’t even know himself. Except this man wasn’t a stranger. There was something about him; he had seen him before, even before the battle where he had beaten him up to the extent that he had ended up in here, despite the fact that he had noticed how this man didn’t bruise as easily as the average person.

He can’t help but move forward to study the impossible man’s face more closely. There is something familiar about his face, something so familiar. He leans in closer. Something familiar about his jawline, his cheekbones, his nose, his closed eyes, his lips. He lets his gaze linger.

_Steve._ The name resonates from somewhere deep down inside him. Steve. He tosses the name around in his head. Steve. Steve.

“Steve…” he says softly, trying it out, the name feeling familiar on his tongue. He reaches his left hand out, stopping just before it touches the man’s cheek.

_“It’s me. It’s Steve” a familiar voice tells him and he looks up into familiar eyes. “Steve” he hears his own voice say, his lips stretch with it pulling into a grin that he can feel reaching his eyes, warming his cheeks. The straps that were holding him to the table are gone and he reaches out for the familiar face–_

He stumbles back into reality as his metal hand touches the man’s face. He stares with wide eyes as the touch makes the man’s lashes start to flutter as if he’s about to wake up. He’s not ready for the man’s intense and familiar eyes to be on him. He’s not ready to talk to him. He’s not ready.

He lets his instincts take over and is out the window he came in through in a matter of seconds.

\---

Steve opens his eyes slowly and takes in the empty hospital room surrounding him. He could’ve sworn he had heard a voice, a voice that had sounded just like Bucky, a voice saying his name. He had felt something cold against his cheek, touching him so gently.

“Steve!” Sam exclaims with a big smile as he enters the room. “What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“It was probably just a dream” Steve croaks looking towards the windows.

“Well, welcome back to the real world my man!” Sam says cheerfully and pats him on the shoulder.

Steve chuckles. “Thank you, I guess.”

This definitely beats waking up to the sound of an old game he’d already been too.

\---

He stops outside and just listens to the man and his friend talking for a while as he tries to catch his breath. Wait, why did he need to catch his breath again? He takes a deep breath and lets his flesh palm rub over his face.

_“It’s me. It’s Steve.”_

He spares a single glance towards the hospital room before he sighs and makes his escape.


	2. The Exhibit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky looks at exhibits and Steve reads a file.

If he doesn’t want to be found he needs to keep moving. He has to leave town soon, he’s been here too long. There’s just one thing he needs to do first.

He walks in to the exhibit with his shoulders hunched and his hands in the pockets of the jacket he stole a while ago now. ‘Captain America’ the signs read in big bold letters. Right, Steve’s not just the scrawny and asthmatic little guy he has memories of sharing an apartment with, he’s fucking Captain America too. He still has to get used to that, not that the larger version of Steve is any less familiar.

All of the displays are a little too bright, a little too colorful and the narrative voice is so loud, it’s starting to hurt his head already. To be fair, his head hasn’t been in the greatest shape since his memories have been flowing back, filling up the emptiness inside his mind, never coming in the right order. His mind was a mess of holding a small Steve’s hand and telling him to breath as he wheezed through his asthma attack, pulling the trigger and watching someone crumbled to the ground behind a big Steve through an old fashioned sniper scope, big warm hands on the back of his neck, on his waist– he shakes his head ending his train of thought there.

His eyes wander around the room until they stop at a big black and white image of the reflection that had looked back at him whenever he’d glanced at the windows he’d passed ever since pulling Steve out of the water. He walks over slowly.

‘James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes’, it reads, ‘Best friends since childhood. Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers where inseparable on both school yard and battlefield…’

Huh, well there you go. Seems like Steve was telling the truth. Wait, no, of course Steve was telling the truth, Steve would never lie to him. He can’t help but start a little at how easily his mind assures him of this fact; Steve would never lie to him. That’s another emotion connected to Steve to add to the catalogue he’s started keeping in his head – trust. Well more like trusting him not to lie to him. No, trust, trust feels right. He adds that to the catalogue as well.

He gets to the part about his supposed death in 1944. ‘Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in the service of his country having fallen of a train in…’

The scene that has haunted almost every nightmare he remembers having comes crashing down on him.

_The railing gives way and he’s falling. Falling amidst the snow covered mountains, his hand stretched out, reaching for safety, reaching for Steve. He’s falling. The sound of Steve desperately yelling his name is still ringing in his ears. He’s falling. He’s falling._

Someone bumps into him and he’s startled out of his terror. “Oh, I’m sorry, hadn’t seen you there, are you okay?” the person asks looking apologetically at him. When he doesn’t answer the person frowns and turns looking at the wall of information next to them. He doesn’t have to stay and see this person’s eyes widen at the image of Bucky on the wall, he knows he’s about to get recognized so he quickly makes his exit before the person has time to turn around and look at him again. He definitely needs to leave town now.

\---

In the other end of town Steve is looking through a file in a cemetery. He’d been right to dread doing this. When Natasha had said the Winter Soldier was credited with over two dozen assassinations she hadn’t been kidding even in the slightest, but the most disturbing part of the file isn’t the hit count but the treatment of the Winter Soldier, of Bucky.

They’d treated him like a lab rat, testing their knock-off super-serums on him, using unfinished and untested machinery to tinker with his mind, strapped a prototype mechanical arm to him with force that had left his body scared. He’d had several violent outbursts between missions and so they had decided to lock him up in what was basically an advanced freezer until they could find a use for him. His memories had started to seep back in the longer he was in the field so they’d taken to wiping his mind with electroshock between missions.

Steve feels sick to his stomach. They had twisted and turned with all of their might until the Bucky Steve knew was all gone. If only he’d caught Bucky that day on the train. If he’d just been better, faster, stronger, all of this would’ve never happened.


End file.
